Are you perfect? Or perfectly screwed?

Imperfect Perfectionists! Graham here.

Ever found yourself hung up on something you can’t seem to change?

Something you desperately wish was different?

Something that takes up a considerable amount of your mental and emotional attention, most hours of most days? 

When you’re really stuck on something you can’t change, it can feel like there are only two possible paths forward. Find a way to fix the difficult thing. Or accept that your life is completely and utterly ruined.

How pleasant.

But... what if there was a third path?

The laws of stuckness

When you’re really stuck, it can feel like your whole life is ruled by the thing you’re stuck on. And it’s a jealous ruler - a despot who wants everything to be about them. 

Say you get news of a friend achieving something momentous. Sure, you’ll feel pleased for them, but not just yet. First, the laws of stuckness require you to think something like, ‘I’ll never be happy the way they are right now.’

Or say you get news about yourself that is an objective sign of your own achievement. The laws of stuckness are clear here too. You’re allowed to feel proud of yourself, but first you must think something like, ‘This is the kind of news I would enjoy a lot more if I hadn’t already ruined my life.’

Two equally impossible paths

For me, my most recent state of stuckness circles around a chronic pain issue that’s dogged me for the past three years, defying all medical advice. It’s consumed far more of my mental life than I could even quantify - hours spent desperately searching for a fix for the pain itself, and still more hours spent obsessing over all the ways this pain will ruin any chance at real and lasting happiness.

The emotional swing is extreme - between hope (I’ll be fine, I can fix this) and despair (I can’t fix it, and that means my life is over).

It often feels like I really only have two options.

Option one: to do better. To try something new to change or fix this difficult thing, once and for all. In short, to become a completely different person, the kind who doesn’t have these sorts of problems anymore.

Or Option two: to wallow in despair.

These can feel like two equally impossible paths. One is impossible to do, the other is impossible to live with.

And yet I have to do something. So I end up trying to walk down both paths at once - doubling back, repeatedly switching tracks, feeling like I’m getting nowhere.

Productive!

Time for a brief Adlerian detour

What if there was a path in between?

Remember Adler? The contemporary of Freud and Jung that never got the same hype despite having far more practical solutions to life’s inevitable hard bits? 

He had a few things to say about all this.

For one thing, he wasn’t convinced the hopeful, ‘I’ll be okay’ path was always that helpful. Writing a hundred years before the rise of wellness Instagram and inspirational quotes, Adler was already questioning the value of positive affirmations. For Adler, trying to convince yourself ‘I’ll be okay’ is of limited value, since at some point those affirmations have a tendency to butt up against the reality that things are not always okay.

Even if you can fix this particular difficult thing, there will eventually be difficult things you can’t fix. The longer you stay on that ‘I’m just fine’ path, the further you get from reality.

But neither did he think the answer was to give up on yourself. For Adler, the path of despair ends up veering just as far away from reality as the path of blind hope. Stay on that path long enough and you stop seeing any joy or lightness in your life, even when there is plenty.

A different kind of affirmation

Instead of trying to convince yourself 'I’ll be totally fine', Adler suggested a different tack. Something he called ‘affirmative resignation’.

Affirmative resignation is a particular attitude you can cultivate toward yourself. It’s not positive affirmation (I’m perfect!) but it’s not the other extreme either, it’s not ‘I’m the worst and I may as well accept it.’

It’s somewhere in between. It’s a willingness to see your faults, but not to see those faults as a reason to give up on yourself. 

It’s not an easy attitude to cultivate. We humans like our extremes. They offer certainty in an uncertain world. But when you’re really stuck, affirmative resignation can offer a more useful way of relating to the difficult things in your life.

Affirmative resignation isn’t hope, it’s something else

Maybe the thing you’re stuck on is happening right now - a clear and present loss - or maybe it’s the fear of loss and failure to come.

Maybe it’s something that anyone would be stuck on, if it happened to them. Or maybe it’s something objectively small, and you can’t explain why you’re still so stuck on it.

Whatever the case, Adler’s advice is the same.

Instead of spending your mental energy trying to convince yourself you’re fine when you’re pretty sure you’re not, is there a way of acknowledging the difficult thing without jumping all the way to my life is ruined?

Affirmative resignation can offer this third option. It’s somewhere in between being perfect and perfectly screwed.

For me, whenever I find myself stuck in a mental loop, thinking about how awful my chronic pain is, how life will never be as happy and easy as it once was, I try thinking something like, happiness is harder than it used to be... And I can still be happy.

Or a shorter version: I’m a little dinged up, but still running. 

The point is to find a new way to name the thing that’s got you stuck. You’re not denying the difficult thing. Instead, your aim is to gently weave that difficult thing into a picture of yourself that is still, ultimately, okay.

Not perfect. But not perfectly screwed.

An Adlerian Prayer for Stuckness

Stuckness is a slow-moving thing, even when you can muster the courage to go down this third path. 

Stuckness demands of you the kind of patience that you only develop when you absolutely have to. The kind of patience you will never get any real credit for.

So by way of encouragement, I’m curious, what happens when we apply Adler’s ‘affirmative resignation’ to this very feeling of stuckness?

Try this if you’re game today. Call it an Adlerian Prayer for Stuckness. 

Pick one thing that you are finding difficult right now. One thing you desperately wish was different. Then repeat after me (as out loud as you dare).

I am truly, madly, deeply hung up on this difficult thing.

Despite my best efforts, I am convinced it shouldn’t be like this.

As much as I sincerely wish to change this thing, it appears that right now it is out of my control.

So I wish I could at least let it go. Be a little less hard on myself... 

...And I can’t seem to do that either goddammit. 

I’m stuck. 

I wish I wasn’t. (But hey that’s kind of the point!)

Today at least I’m stuck. Perfectly, imperfectly, stuck.

Then try this a couple times today, when you remember. When your brain reminds you about this disappointing thing, when you notice yourself tense up or go into problem-solving or catastrophising mode, say one word to yourself. 

Stuck.

It’s not a judgement. It’s an affirmative resignation. It’s holding two things at once in your brain: I would like to be more chill about this thing and I am not at all chill about this thing today.

These are the multiple truths of living life with a lot going on in your brain. Good luck my friend.